@2019 Andrew O’Kelley. All rights reserved.
No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, expect as permitted by U.S. copyright law.
You owe it to everyone whose every believed in you to never give up.
The Genesis Game
By Andrew O’Kelley
Volume I
Contents
Dedication
The Genesis Game
Chapter 1: The Beginning of the End
Chapter 2: The Rebirth
Chapter 3: Back To The Past
Chapter 4: Sign Me Up
Chapter 5: Into The Dungeon
Chapter 6: Starting Point
Chapter 7: Phase II Begins
Chapter 8: Betrayal
Chapter 9: Discovery
Chapter 10: Teamwork
Chapter 11: The Infernal
Chapter 12: True Colors
Chapter 13: Left Behind
Chapter 14: The Wormwood Report
Chapter 15: The Ties That Bind
Chapter 16: Loose Ends
Chapter 17: The Remaining
Chapter 18: Revelations
Chapter 19: The Webs We Weave
Chapter 20: Welcome To Hometown
Chapter 1: The Beginning of the End
* * *
The man who had been known as the Black Seraph crashed to the ground. His body skidding along the stone floor as his torn wings hung bloody from his back and the open wounds that covered his body bled freely through the holes and gashes of his shredded armor.
But none of that mattered, he had made it just in time to reach his goal as the boosts from his defensive abilities deactivated, no longer able to offer protection. Every ability on cooldown, his mana reserves spent during his fight with the Demon Prince of Fire, Adramelech. His goal close, he needed to hurry before the forces he brought with him failed, their numbers exhausted.
As he picked himself off the ground, his eyes filled with dark ambition and determination, he looked only forward. He refused to look back at the devastation he had left on the battlefield as he carved through the forces amassed against him, unleashing waves of power after power. He refused to look back at the carnage left in the wake of his battle with Adramelech, he carved a path forward towards his goal.
He couldn't risk his victory for even a second to look and see if any of his vassals and any of his allies would survive. Even a moment of hesitation would be the end of him, allowing pursuing enemies the chance to collapse on him and finally overwhelm him. For Seraph, all that remained was to move forward without hesitation, one step at a time as his life’s blood poured freely from his body, his arms extended towards his goal.
Though he refused to look and couldn't see how the battle was going in his absence, he could hear, and with his advanced hearing, he could pick out individual details from the battle. He could hear the sounds of warfare dying down and lessen as the men and women who had sworn to serve him died. With every death and every fatal wound, the sound of steel striking and being struck lessened.
One by one, their lives came abruptly to an end; the sound of their death throes subtle but not impossible for Seraph to pick out each muttering in the moment of their deaths some wish for Seraph to save them, a belief that he would end the battle. But it was not to be, though Seraph had promised to deliver victory. Though he knew the names of all the fallen, just as he knew the names of all who had sworn themselves to him, he felt no remorse, no guilt, no sorrow, only determination to continue.
"You did not die in vain." Seraph promised as he forced his damaged body to move that last short distance across the ground towards his goal, leaving a trail of fresh and coagulated blood behind him. His bloody hand pressed down on the cover of a book that sat upon an altar of white marble, Seraph knew it to be the Altar of the End. As his hand connected with the book immediately, all the remaining sounds of the surrounding battle faded into nothing while only white noise remained.
The sounds of the monsters consuming the fallen dead that littered the battlefield had stopped. No more could Seraph hear the gruesome sounds of the murderous feasting of monsters, the sound of flesh tearing and bones snapping. This moment marked the beginning of the end.
"All for this moment.” Seraph thought as he struggled to stand, his hand on the Altar as his bloody handprint pressed into the book as his own remaining power was channeled into it, his memories and even himself written and imprinted into the pages of the book. Seraph took solace knowing their trials were finally ending, this is what they had all fought for, what they had come for, what they died for. His few friends, his allies, his rivals, his vassals, and even his enemies fighting alongside each other under the banner of the guild he had forced them into, the guild Carrion Crow.
The last of humanity, a mere handful of warriors, was all that remained of the billions who had walked the Earth. The few remaining all greatest warriors of some renown. True elites among elites. Surviving long after the remainder of humanity long since destroyed and consumed. The strong consume the weak and life within the dungeon had been no different.
Though Seraph and his guild mates had consumed many of the weak, this was not the source of their power. Their power the result of the culmination of decades of building their strength within the dungeon and seizing the strength of those too weak to protect whatever strength they had tried to build. All joining him in this one last battle, all fighting under his guild banner.
A battle that even with their overwhelming power and the vast diversity of the power they wielded between them, was a battle they knew they could not win, a battle in the deepest pit within the dungeon, the Locum Malificar. The final floor of the dungeon whose entrance had long overlooked the rest in dread anticipation, daring all those who would ascend to come and know death while promising prized survival if, but one could claim the Altar.
His guild mates had joined him in that darkest of pits knowing they had no hope of surviving the battle against the vast horde of Ephemeral beings that awaited them and the army of Eldritch horrors that served them. Without the hope of survival, they came anyway. Some believed in him, some believed in helping humanity, some hoped-for breakthroughs in their own strength, some unbelieving in the danger. Many more desired an end one way or another. While others were brought by force or coercion, either they would fight, or they would be consumed, in this final battle, there would be no sidelines to safely watch from and hope to be the victor.
This had been the last effort of the dying race of men. A refusal to go quietly in the night. One opportunity, the only opportunity, to give one man a chance to end the game into which they had all been conscripted against their will when the dungeon had appeared on Earth and forcefully began taking in people to run its halls and fight their battles within.
This was a chance to give one man, the sum of all men, the opportunity to conquer the dungeon. This chance, this one chance provided at the cost of their lives in promise that their lives would be renewed.
They all knew it would cost them their lives, they knew, but to them, the cause was worth that price. Many did not believe they would be resurrected but had hoped with their sacrifice humanity might live on. Their lives would provide a distraction as they engaged the Ephemeral in battle long enough so that the man known as Black Seraph could bypass the majority of the horde and seize the Altar of the End, something that had long been rumored as a way to end the hell in which they all found themselves, and even a chance at rebirth for all who had been lost in the dungeon since the beginning.
And yet, the sacrifice was not enough. Even with the battle host comprised of and by those great warriors, those elites, it was not enough. Seraph had been forced to engage a Prince of
Hell, and though he had managed to banish Adramelech to oblivion, he had been mortally wounded, his side torn open, and his heart destroyed.
Though he was dying, Seraph was still able to move by the sheer force of his will and the capabilities of his powerful body that allowed him to evade death for a time. As he looked at his bloody handprint on the Altar and as the book placed upon it ceased moving, no longer inscribing, he finally allowed himself to collapse and fall against the Altar using it for support as his ruined body struggled to live.
"Finally, it is done." He thought as his breathing grew more labored, and his thoughts grew hazy. He tried to ignore the blood that was pooling beneath him and the cold that was starting to settle into his bones but could no longer. The sharp pain that came from his torn wings was constant. Though he did not know what would come next, he was content in his part of it. Content to wait for his reward and the salvation of humanity, he smiled knowing would be considered their savior.
As he slumped against the Altar, he closed his eyes satisfied to come to a finish and exhausted from his efforts, and within that exhaustion, everything stopped. Time and space stood still. The remaining white noise that had permeated the air was gone, replaced by a cruel and unusual quiet devoid of any signs of life, not even the sound of the beating of his heart or breath in his lungs could be heard.
If not for the pain in his body, he would have thought he had died as his blood fully coated his skin and pooled the ground beneath him. Any doubt he had that he was still alive was suspended when he reached out to touch a droplet of his blood that had fallen from brow and hung suspended in the air unmoving.
This was something else, something more he realized as he got up and removed himself from the Altar and waited. He was no longer exhausted, his wounds while unhealed did not continue to bleed. The thing he was waiting for was coming. The battlefield that had surrounded the Altar, the site of the final battle of humanity against annihilation, had disappeared. In its place the battlefield seemed to have given birth to a vast emptiness of endless white, and in the middle of that infinite white stood the blood-stained altar. The man who had brought the end waited for humanity to be given what it had been promised, an end to their struggle and a chance to be reborn, a new Eden to be granted to humanity, a victory, survival.
"Seraph," said an agonized voice, a voice for whom Seraph could not place the location of its origin. “This thing you have done is no victory, how can there be victory in all this death? Victory was never to be the reward, only survival. Your brothers and sisters lay dead in the field, and beneath them, I see the mountains of corpses piled from the innumerable inglorious dead. How can this be? How could you have failed so spectacularly? I have long promised a new Eden if only humanity would reach my Altar, and yet, humanity is no more. I cannot save you from extinction, this thing you have done to yourself, the dead number in the billions, and how many of those billions have been sacrificed on the Altar of your ambition to be stronger. I cannot bring back the dead that you have murdered. I cannot bring back those you have killed.”
Furious Seraph looked around, still not seeing the voice as he raised his arms in anger and summoned a black flame that spread out from him in waves, a flame that would burn anything that it touched and directed it in all directions, and yet the voice remained unharmed. “Why do you do this, Seraph?”
“I know you; I know who you are! Dungeon spirit, monster!” Shouted Seraph in anger. “Who are you to judge me? To judge us for what we have done and had to do when you have trapped us here to play your game, and yet I have won your game. I have conquered your floors one by one. I have slain your monsters and your minions. It is done, and it is over, I have reached your Altar and claimed it as my own. I am the last, and no more will come after me. No more will die here to feed the engine of your appetites. You owe me what you have promised spirit. You have long promised a new Eden and salvation for humanity if only, but one would claim the Altar as ours. I have done this; my hand is imprinted on the book of the Altar. My story is inscribed in its pages, restore my friends to life as I know you can and let us be free of you.”
“I am what I am human. You have won nothing. I have long promised since the very first day when I opened my halls that I would provide a new Eden for humanity if humanity would but reach my Altar. Humanity is dead human, and you, not I have killed them, through your negligence, your apathy, and your contempt. You confused your power, assuming this strength to be your own, yet it is mine, from within my dungeon you have found this strength, I have extended to you my power, and yet you denied the same to so many others. You have confused my power with your own.”
"It is within the halls of my creation you have wandered these many years as you sought refuge from the apocalypse and the calamity that has been unleashed upon the Earth. And yet you have denied the same refuge to others. How many people did you condemned to die? Do they number in the thousands or the millions? Innocents whose only offense was that they were weaker than you were. I have every reason to judge you, you who have been petty, you who have been vile, you whom have taken, and stolen. You who had the strength to protect the defenseless and the broken and chose not to. You who were known as the Black Seraph, the Angel of Genocide, you who have killed more humans than ever died in my halls."
Seraph roared in anger as dark mana overtook his body, and he took on a terrible visage as he grew many times his size as the darkness built him an avatar of destruction, the power radiating out from him far greater than any he had ever shown before. "You would defy me, dungeon? I am primordial and power incarnate."
"You are nothing," Said the Spirit of the Dungeon, and with those words came a power that eclipsed that of what Seraph had just shown. In an instant his dark mana was stripped away, his avatar reverted into nothing, the wings he had been so proud of torn from his body, until all that remained was the cripple of a man underneath, crippled and heavily wounded and only alive because time had stopped.
"An imitation is what you are. I am judgment, and my judgment of your kind remains the same. I made the dungeon as a trial, a trial you have failed, a trial those elites for whose lives you begged failed. I have given humanity every opportunity to overcome their existence, and all I have witnessed has been the suffering you bring upon each other."
"I forced this confrontation with annihilation, and yet humanity refused to do what survival required, raise one another up. To strengthen each other as only iron may sharpen iron, and as only the strong may serve alongside the strong. Yet, where is your army, you who were once billions? I counted humanity as numerous as the grains of sand along the ocean, but so few among you survived till the end. You numbered in the billions, but only hundreds have survived, and of those hundreds who marched on the Locum Maleficar today, only you, Seraph, remain, only you survive, and yet soon you too will be gone to join the others in death when these mortal wounds take you. This is no victory, Seraph. You have doomed yourself."
The man humbled and cowed begged; he could not die like this. "Spirit, dungeon, please, this cannot be how it ends. The others they followed me, they trusted me. It was my idea to hoard power just as it was my idea that left them all dead on the field. I thought this would work. We just wanted it to be over and thought that by ending it everything would go back to being as it was. We wanted our lives back. Please, what can I do? Take my life, take everything, but please spare the rest. They do not deserve this fate. I thought if I took the Altar everything would go back to how it was before the dungeon appeared. I cannot be the last, if you won't revive them, then please just let me die."
"What is done is done, Seraph, and cannot be undone. But this end is not what I wanted. This is not the ending that anyone wanted. I had not expected humanity to fail in this trial, I will not allow this story to end with your failure here. So, to you, I will give what you wish for, a chance that all ask but few, few ever receive, a chance to go back and right what was wrong, to fix mistakes, and do what needs to be done to save humanity."
"For what is done cannot be undone, but it can be rewritten. As your lifeblood falls to the floor, remember what you have seen and heard, you cannot save humanity without saving people, and for that, I will send you back in time, your power sealed, to the day you first chose to descend into the dungeon. I charge you to bring humanity to my Altar, not you alone, not your elites, no, bring humanity to my Altar in the thousands and the millions then, and only then will you see the new Eden. My dungeon is not your end, it is your beginning and your salvation, remember this Seraph."
With a simple motion the impossible man restored the flow of time, and with it so too did Seraph's injuries and wounds once more flow with his lifeblood.
The man known as the Black Seraph, who had been born as Luca, collapsed at the base of the Altar dying. His body finally failing, his abilities unable to heal the massive damage he took. His wings of blackened steel hung uselessly torn and shredded in two piles away from his body. More blood pooled on the ground from his many wounds. His power, at last, failing him, and as he closed his eyes forever, he thought he saw a man made of stars whose body seemed to contain the infinite cosmos reach for him cradle his broken body as the darkness finally took him.
"Remember, Seraph, there will be no second chances."
Chapter 2: The Rebirth
* * *
As Seraph's body died, it disappeared into the dungeon floor below it, absorbed and assimilated by the dungeon, but as for his spirit, it did not go on towards what dark retribution awaited him. His spirit remained and waited rather than pass into the darkness, bound in part to the world through the tome on the Altar.
* * *
In another time and another life, Luca dreamed. He dreamt of a blood-covered Altar, and on that Altar was set a tome from which a deep darkness seeped out. A darkness that covered the ground and spread all over him with wings of darkness, enfolding him like a second skin. A darkness that threatened to drown him and drown the whole world, and within that darkness, he learned a truth of the world that only the dead and dying know. That to live and breathe is better than any glory or renown.
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